


Continue!

by Einzel



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: F/M, High School AU, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 10:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13611183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Einzel/pseuds/Einzel
Summary: “In their first year, their desks sat worlds apart - hers on the far right in the middle, next to a window gazing upon an empty hallway, and his in the top left corner, framed by sunlit glass that illuminated his silhouette as though he had ascended from the heavens. Oh, how she loved to watch him from her seat, but for all she looked, he had never spared her a glance.And now the seating arrangements had changed, and she was assigned the desk directly behind his, and for all she looked, again, he never turned around.And why would he?Touko’s skin prickled. While Togami Byakuya always faced forward, and had eyes only for the horizon and the grand road of opportunities before him, whenever Touko did the same, all she could see was him…”An ordinary High School AU, in which budding literary girl Fukawa Touko is trying to bond with her crush, Togami Byakuya, the handsome vice-captain of the road racing club.





	Continue!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zenonaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift to my good friend, @zenonaa! Happy Birthday, and I hope you'll enjoy this story!

“Excuse me…” first-year Chitanda poked her head inside Touko’s classroom just as a flock of second-years had left it, her face brightening when she spotted Touko by her desk. “Fukawa-san! May I speak to you for a moment?” she took a step forward and clapped her hands together. “It’s about your contribution…”

Touko hesitated. Her eyes flitted to Togami Byakuya, who had finished packing his things, and made his way to the exit currently blocked by Chitanda.

 _“Do you mind?”_ he said to the intruder, who twitched and whirled around to face Byakuya as if she had never noticed him until that moment. _The nerve..!_ thought Touko, the words on the tip of her tongue, but she quickly clamped down on a nail not to draw further attention to herself by speaking out of turn.

“S-So sorry!” Chitanda stepped inside and scooted to the right to let Byakuya pass. As he turned his head to shoot her a reprimanding glare on his way out, Byakuya’s eyes briefly met Touko’s, who flushed and dropped her gaze to the clutter on her desk.

By the time she looked up, Byakuya had vanished.

* * *

_The nerve,_ Touko gritted her teeth as she hurried outside and cut around the corner of the main building in pursuit of Byakuya, her school bag thumping against her back. Not that Chitanda had kept her long; her kouhai only laid claim to a few minutes of Touko’s precious time at the behest of the club president, but the look on Byakuya’s face continued to haunt her as she approached the sports facilities located in the back. To have inconvenienced honor student Togami Byakuya, even indirectly, and for him to take notice of her at such a moment… Touko’s cheeks seared in shame at the thought.

In their first year, their desks sat worlds apart - hers on the far right in the middle, next to a window gazing upon an empty hallway, and his in the top left corner, framed by sunlit glass that illuminated his silhouette as though he had ascended from the heavens. Oh, how she loved to watch him from her seat, but for all she looked, he had never spared her a glance.

And now the seating arrangements had changed, and she was assigned the desk directly behind his, and for all she looked, again, he never turned around.

 _And why would he?_ Touko’s skin prickled. While Togami Byakuya always faced forward, and had eyes only for the horizon and the grand road of opportunities before him, whenever Touko did the same, all she could see was him…

Her scalp tingled as something wet trickled down her temple, followed by the sickening pelt of a million pinpricks: the sky bursting into tears above her head.

* * *

Refusing to turn back now, Touko set her jaws and broke into a sprint towards her goal, her braids whipped by rain and wind until she reached the road racing club and huddled beneath the roof overhang shielding the front of the building. There she shrugged off her school bag and pulled it in front of herself by the straps, then slumped against the wall by the entrance with an agitated whine.

As soon as her heart stopped battering her lungs, she turned her head and risked a peek through the nearest window, the glass fogged by her hot, ragged breaths, then twitched and shrank away as someone pointed in her direction. Within seconds, the door to her left slid open, and Touko was met with a pair of stern red eyes.

 _“You!_ Do not just stand there!” Ishimaru Kiyotaka put a hand on his hip. “Come inside this instant!”

Touko tried to stammer an excuse between chattering teeth, but seemed to think the better of it as Ishimaru took a step towards her, no doubt to seize her arm and drag her inside with brute force. She gathered up her school bag and scampered into the club room, where several members had gathered for roller and weight practice.

 _“Captain Oogami!”_ Ishimaru saluted one of them. “A non-member has entered!”

“Offer her a towel,” replied Oogami Sakura, never looking up from her weights. “She must be drenched from the rain and might catch cold otherwise.”

“Right!” Ishimaru lowered his hand and ran off to fetch a towel from the valet. “Here!” he presented it to Touko, who lowered her school bag to the ground and pinched up the towel by one of its corners, drawing it from Ishimaru’s hands as if she were uncovering a viper’s nest. She dabbed her face and hair dry, unable to look at anyone. Until…

“When you are ready, state your business,” came a voice she didn’t dare hope to hear. Touko’s breath hitched.

“T-Togami-kun! M-My business..?”

 _“Yes,_ your business,” replied Byakuya, who currently occupied one of the rollers. “As far as I am aware, the literary club is in the opposite direction, so you can have no other reason for being here than to see someone - about an urgent matter, perhaps.”

Touko swallowed. “H-How did you know that I—”

“…was a member of the literary club?” Byakuya completed her sentence. “The answer is simple. You sit behind me in class, and so I have overheard your conversations with other students. But suppose I paid no attention to your idle chatter, I would have still heard your name mentioned several times during morning announcements, to the effect that you had placed at various writing competitions. Where else would such a prize winner be but the literary club?”

“I.. I see,” Touko tucked the towel to her flushed cheeks. When she finally steeled herself enough to lift her head, she realized that the others had resumed their training and conversations, including Ishimaru. The only one regarding her with any interest now was Byakuya, and so she and her bag inched closer to watch him train.

A few minutes passed in dull silence. Touko braced herself.

“Is it.. very t-tedious, Togami-kun?” she nodded to the roller. “T-To be in constant motion, without moving forward…”

“In a sense, it _is_ tedious when you train for hours at a time,” replied Byakuya, his eyes still fixed ahead, “but it is essential to achieve my ultimate goal. Do not assume that there is no progress just because I am not _moving forward_ as you said. Roller practice hones the mind and body. It is a test of self-control and stamina. Those who cannot endure the demanding monotony of training can never hope to reach greater heights!”

Touko stared at him wide-eyed, lips ajar. Byakuya lifted his head.

“However… if you are so worried that I might die of boredom any moment, you have my permission to entertain me.”

“T-To entertain you..?” Touko wrung the corners of the towel hung about her neck. “Oh, T-Togami-kun… _in front of everyone else, too…”_ she pressed the tips of her index fingers together, a wobbly grin oozing across her face.

 _“Yes,_ entertain me,” scoffed Byakuya. “Or is that filthy sack of yours filled with nothing but bulky waste?” he shot a reproachful look at the tattered school bag by her feet. Touko flinched as she caught his meaning and crouched down to yank her bag open.

“I-I do have some… drafts, with me…” she tugged at folders and textbooks in search for her personal binder. “I write in my free time, a-and I’ve been asked to contribute a short story, to the literary club’s anthology series…”

“Read me one of your drafts, then,” said Byakuya. “If you intend these for publication, there can be no harm in submitting your work to the judgment of an alpha.”

“An _alpha…”_ Touko pressed a hand to her cheek. Byakuya clicked his tongue.

“A _beta,_ then, if you prefer that term instead. Or did you think I was incompetent in anything but cycling?”

“O-Of course not, T-Togami-kun!” Touko shook her head so hard her braids thrashed against her shoulders. “I know you’re, exceptional… in anything you choose to pursue!”

“You are correct,” Byakuya’s features smoothed out as disdain gave way to pure, determined focus. “Now choose a draft and come closer, unless you want to recite it loud enough for the entire club, and begin.”

“Y-Yes, Togami-kun!” Touko yanked out her binder at last, from whence she produced a slim, dog-eared notepad. After a moment of hesitation, she stopped by Byakuya’s side so that he might hear her better over the shriek of his wheels and the voices of the others in the background, and cleared her throat.

 _“Cherry Blossoms. He first saw her in April…”_ Touko started reading, voicing every line as it had fallen from her pen. Sentences, fragments, author’s notes scribbled in the margins, they flowed from her without explanation, without excuse or nervous stuttering, in a way everyday conversation never could. Byakuya remained silent and his features impenetrable throughout, even when she paused to turn the page or catch her breath, until she reached the end, and looked up to hear his verdict.

“The plot is disjointed and the subject matter lacking,” said Byakuya, his eyes still hung on the opposite wall. “Only the delivery held it together, but the written text will not have that benefit.”

“Y-You’re right,” Touko closed her notepad with trembling hands. “I might abandon it.. in favor of other projects…”

A moment of silence as Byakuya reached for his bottle and straightened in his seat to drink. After a long draught, his eyes wavered and fell as though he had been caught off guard.

“The rain is over,” he spoke at last. “You may leave now.”

Touko turned her head to the window, equally surprised.

“O-Oh.. right… T-Thank you, for your time…” she sank down and tucked the binder away, then hoisted her bag over her shoulders. She hesitated. “T-Togami-kun… May I come back here, another time… to show you another draft?”

“If you wish,” Byakuya slipped the bottle back into its cage. “It is a distraction, but dealing with distractions is also part of road racing.” He paused and added, “When your draft is ready, you will let me know in class. I will not have you disrupt practice by barging into the club when I might be absent.”

“T-Thank you, Togami-kun!” Touko bowed to him, then fluttered to the door, where she was promptly detained by Ishimaru until she returned the towel he had lent to her.

* * *

From that day forward, Touko visited the road racing club every week to read to Byakuya, and when she had exhausted her current drafts, she brought him texts that had inspired her. Poetry, short stories, novels, and essays; interviews with renowned literary minds; scenes from plays and excerpts from movie scripts, and even a tome of Western mythology so she could tell him stories of Greek constellations and Roman legends. She never stalled Byakuya for more than two weeks, though. Her drafts either burgeoned and bloomed in meticulous revision, or were stripped to atoms and their scraps reconfigured into something else, but no matter their fate, Touko presented them to him again and again in search of something, anything that might shake Byakuya out of his stoic complacency. The more she laid her soul bare before her unimpressed alpha, the more Touko’s ambitions fluctuated, until _perfection_ was fixed in her mind as the moment when she would finally ignite a spark in those cold, distant eyes.

 _Foolish,_ she often scolded herself. Togami Byakuya had consented to her company, and tolerated her not only in class, but also at the road racing club. He even offered her constructive criticism… but was his criticism all that she could hope for?

In a haze of constant revisions and school assignments, of training and competition, fall faded to winter, and January had bled into February when she returned again, with something completely new.

It had no title. In its current state, it barely even qualified as a draft, yet she straightened her shoulders and held out her notepad with the solemnity of a queen delivering a proclamation. In that state of inspired madness, she raised her voice and sank everyone else into awed silence, to drown in the avalanche of her passionate recital.

 _“She turned from the Moon, to the reflection of its glow in his eyes…”_ she read another line, then paused in thought - and the next moment, something shifted in the corner of her vision: Byakuya turning his head to face her, features tense.

 _“Continue,”_ he breathed, but she remained still except for the quick rise and fall of her chest. “I said, _continue!”_

For a moment, Touko waivered, then shrank backwards and clamped her notepad shut, pressing it to her heart.

“W-When the time comes.. y-you shall read the rest of it _yourself!”_ she whirled around and ran to the door, risking one more look at her stunned audience before she fled for good.

* * *

The next day, Touko passed Byakuya and took her seat behind him as if nothing had happened, and too proud to betray interest in what she had done (what she had done _to him),_ Byakuya ignored her in return. Between the unstoppable force of his obstinate pride, and the immovable object of her detached facade, that week petered out in a stalemate, and for all of next week, he waited in vain for her to inquire after his training schedule, even if it was a mere formality at that point, for Touko knew it by heart.

In those days, sitting so close yet worlds apart, he often wondered if their weekly engagements were at an end. And yet the air crackled around her whenever their eyes met, as if she were biding her time…

_W-When the time comes.. y-you shall read the rest of it yourself!_

Byakuya scowled at the memory of her defiance, the storm in those dirty lilac eyes, but unable to confront her, he continued to endure in silence. After all, enduring to the bitter end was also part of road racing.

* * *

For his perseverance, he was finally rewarded on the following Wednesday, which at first promised little more than Byakuya’s usual fare on Valentine’s Day. He drummed his fingers through the others’ excited chatter about honmei and giri chocolates ( _A waste of effort on either part,_ Byakuya turned his head), and immersed himself in a novel he had borrowed from the central library: a murder mystery written by an author Touko had brought to his attention during one of their December sessions. Speaking of Touko, she continued her willful charades, and for most of the morning, she appeared her usual quiet, fidgety self… until the last bell rang, and within seconds, she brushed past Byakuya and disappeared, having gathered her things and packed her bag during sixth period just to precede him.

Byakuya followed suit five minutes later, his brow creased in thought. Based on her writing and the well of inspiration she had shared with him, he imagined Touko a hopeless romantic, the sort to whom Valentine’s Day still held an allure, but he couldn’t discern a modicum of interest in her. Could he have erred in his deductions? _He,_ Togami Byakuya, bested by someone like _her?_

Distracted by troubling conclusions, he soon found himself in the locker room, where he stopped in front of his own to change his shoes. As expected, he found several boxes of chocolate on the upper shelf - it was only natural, considering he was a renowned student athlete, a prodigy even… but what he had failed to anticipate was a thin, rectangular object carefully tucked above the boxes, encased in lilac wrapping paper.

Byakuya stepped back to look around, and when he confirmed that he was alone, he closed his fingers over the edge of the packet and squeezed, to feel the contents bend to the curve of his fingers, but yield no further. He pulled it out and closed his locker - the chocolates could wait -, then carried the packet to the nearest empty classroom, where he settled on the first desk in his path and began shredding the wrapping paper on one end.

As suspected, it concealed a paperback: the newest anthology of the literary club. Or rather, he noted upon turning the first page, a prototype - a single volume produced to assess the composition of the literary club’s chosen design. Compared to the volumes Byakuya had perused at the library, the minimalism of the abstract cover illustration seemed almost crude… but perhaps its simplicity, too, carried its own message.

He turned to the next page, which contained a handwritten inscription.

_To Togami Byakuya from Fukawa Touko. February 14, 2018._

He clicked his tongue and pressed on to the table of contents, from whence he skipped straight to Touko’s contribution: a short story titled _Elusive._

He found to his astonishment that the rudimentary draft that had once bewitched him could no longer compare to its final, polished form. The fire in Touko had molded its coals into diamonds, and his parched mind drank it in, paragraph after paragraph, never stopping until he reached the line, _She turned from the Moon, to see the reflection of its glow in his eyes_.

His lips moved soundlessly as he parsed the ending, and remained parted as his hand sank into his lap.

 _“The Moon is beautiful tonight…”_ he whispered to himself. The words _(Her words)_ sent shivers down his spine and drained all warmth from his fingers, to flush through his chest and into his cheeks in an ardent blaze.

He closed the anthology to check the cover again, which featured two bright circles against a dark blue background: the inner circle pale gray, and the outer circle teal, the cold teal of Byakuya’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Touko’s first-year kouhai was named after Chitanda Eru in Hyouka, because the classics club and its mysterious anthology series was too good a reference to resist, and the road racing club was of course inspired by Yowamushi Pedal, because that’s just the kind of person I am. The rest of the references are to @zenonaa’s fics. Happy Birthday again!


End file.
